Lycée Professionnel Jean-Pierre Champo
Lycee Jean-Pierre Champo is a Vocational school located in the South West of France in the Basque country, half-way between Biarritz and Lourdes. It is a small school with 250 pupils studying mechanics (motorcycles, farm machinery, gardening machinery and heavy duty machinery). Some of the pupils take the vocational training certificate after a two-year course but most of them take the BTEC National Diploma after a three-year-course. They have been involved in European projects since 1992 with Spain and 1996 with Ireland.
All the schools students have general education lessons (French, history, geography, mathematics, science, English or Spanish, art, sport), economy, technology, professional life and of course practice at the school workshop. They all have training periods in companies (6 weeks in the first year, 8 weeks in the second year and 8 weeks in the last year). This has resulted in strong links with the employers in the region. They do their training periods in two parts (one during the first half-year and the second in the last half-year). Some of their pupils also take part in competition (mechanics in motorcycle teams in Spain and Belgium.